A CLINICAL AND LABORATORY STUDY OF 300 CASES OF ACUTE LEUKAEMIA IN ALEXANDRIA

Abstract

The acute leukaemias are a heterogeneous group of neoplasms affecting uncommitted or partially committed haematopoietic stem cells. They differ from Ione another with respect to cell of origin, clinical presentation, course and response to therapy. As advances in I therapy took place, distinguishing the subtypes of acute leukaemia became, increasingly important. Initially, the differentiation of acute lymphocytic leukaemia (ALL) from other forms of leukaemia was emphasized, as therapy/ that was effective for the former was ineffective for the non-lymphocytic types. Subsequently, it became possible to define stages of differentiation in both the lymphoid and myeloid lineages and to characterize the leukaemias that correspond to these stages with respect to their biological features and therapeutic requir~ments. The aim of our work was to perform a clinical and laboratory study on 150 patients with acute leukaemia who were randomly chosen. They were subjected to thorough history taking, complete physical examination and haematological assessment. 79 of them were diagnosed as AML, 70 as ALL and one case was diagnosed as acute undifferentiated leukaemia. Adults (15 years) constituted 59.3% of cases, while 40.7% of our cases were children (<15 years). As regards our acute myeloid leukaemia cases, the commonest morphological subtype encountered was M2 (39.2% of cases) followed by M5 (24.1%), M4 (16.5%), M1 (15.2%), M3 (3.8%) and lastly M7 (1.3%) in order of frequency. We had no cases of MO 'or M6 included in our study. Children and adults did not differ significantly concerning the distribution of different morphological subtypes of AML.